Subject: Getting passwords saved on PINE

From: [email-masked] (Steve Lamb)
Date: 4 Jan 1997 22:22:02 GMT

I have got pine on my OS/2 box and it has a feature to save the IMAP
name/password.  I also want this feature on Linux and FreeBSD but cannot
fine how to do it in the man pages.  Does such a feature exist?

-- 
                      -   -  - ---===+{ }+===--- -  -   -
                                 Steve C. Lamb
                @..@  'Bud'          @..@  'weis'        @..@  'er!'
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              ^^ ~~ ^^             ^^ ~~ ^^            ^^ ~~ ^^

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From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 10:09:49 +0000 (GMT)

"No, but there is a better way"...

PC-Pine offers you the option of saving your username and password because
on the whole: a) PCs are single user machines and locked in people's
offices and so can have passwords saved away in this manner; b) are
untrustworthy in a general sense because software can be run by arbitrary
users to make them do Naughty Things.

The latter makes it impractical to use the more general protection
mechanism that is used by the UNIX variants of Pine.  This is the "rsh
mechanism".

Basically you need to do two things:

1.  Set your IMAP server software up to allow pre-authenticated
connections.

This is done very easily simply by making a symbolic link so that
/etc/rimapd points to the real imapd executable.

2.  Set up rsh access to your IMAP server computer.

This is a little trickier, and must be done with care.  Bacially you need
to tell the IMAP computer to "trust" (allow access without having to
specify a username and password) from certain other hosts you use.  This
is the standard "rsh" command, which alllows you to execute a command on a
trusting host without having to specify a username and password.  It knows
the username to use because of the wonderfully magic rsh software.

Try reading your man pages about "rsh" (the command to do the remote
command), ".rhosts" (the per-user file which controls access) and
"hosts.equiv" (the systemwide file which controls access).  (The latter
two man pages may in fact be one and the same.)

Pine tries to open a pre-authenticated rsh connection before failing down
to a standard connection (to port 143) and prompting for a username and
password.

Cheers,

-- 
Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
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